There is a very interesting insight found in the book of Galatians. Here we have an entire book devoted to defending the pure grace of God and warning against mixing the old and new covenants. This book stresses repeatedly the Gospel, that salvation is by faith and not by works. Think of it, my friend, an entire book that stresses that we must not add works to the message of salvation.

There is however, one verse that stands out like a sore thumb in chapter 5. It says that we are to be very careful to not use our freedom to serve our flesh.

Now, let's put those two thoughts together. An entire book that warns against a performance oriented mindset in terms of our faith, versus one verse that warns against perverting our freedom. This tells us something.

Most people are going to err on the side of performance. This is understandable, is it not? We were all birthed under law (Rom 5:20), lived out of the flesh for years before coming to faith, and of course were blitzed by the lie that we shall be as God. Our greatest struggle is that we are going to be prone to a man-centered, performance oriented, law keeping, righteousness earning mindset when it comes to the things of God.

For the precious few who come to understand the grace of God, we will face a different danger, that we will abuse grace and walk in our flesh. This too is understandable, for when our pendulum is found to be at one extreme, it very often swings to another extreme.

The vast majority of people need to understand what the Gospel of grace is all about, but they will never understand it when we who know grace continue to walk in a self-oriented, self-satisfying lifestyle that refuses to lay down its life in sacrifice for others and blame that lifestyle on the grace of God.